TV report gets too much of a charge out of Barry

It was a little after 8 in the morning, the TV was on and I needed coffee.

Then I heard something on the local TV news that, for a moment, actually made me forget about caffeine.

“A new poll shows a majority of baseball fans believe the charges against Barry Bonds to be true … “

Charges? Charges?? What charges? I got that pit in my stomach known only to journalists who missed a story the night before, then heard about it on TV the next morning.

But, in the very next sentence, the reporter correctly used the word “allegations” instead of “charges.” And, yet another chapter in the “Barry Bonds Traveling Bozos and All-Stars Media Circus” was complete.

We’ve come to this: A story about a poll asking fans their opinion about something that the media thought would probably happen the week before — and then didn’t actually happen but was nonetheless reported as perhaps happening eventually anyway.

If this story was in the newspaper, the headline might be “NEWS DOESN’T HAPPEN — MIGHT YET HAPPEN SOMEDAY” to be followed by a smaller headline, “Poll of fans shows fans, too, believe news may yet actually happen at some point in the future.”

And, that’s the way it is.

What in the name of Edward R. Murrow is going on here?

Everybody needs to take a breath. This non-stop “Might be! Might happen! Might happen!” circus is starting to make me yearn for the calm, non-biased, well-balanced reporting of the Karl Rove indictment (whoops. wait a minute … that indictment never happened either. And to keep this in its proper media environment context, the Rove indictment hasn’t happened yet, but may yet happen someday.)

There was a time when Journalism 101 still meant something. I know it meant a lot to me; it meant I had to be at college every morning at 9 and if I didn’t go, well, there was plenty of actual, hard work to do back on the farm. So I went, and I learned three things:

1. Be really careful when you use the word “charged.” Being “charged” with something is much different than being arrested on suspicion of doing something. And no, it doesn’t mean the same thing as “alleged.” It means you’ve been officially charged with a crime (which hasn’t happened to Bonds). Get this right or you might get sued. Or, even worse, yelled at by your boss.

2. Be fair.

3. Get it right.

I sometimes wonder how often some journalists charged (note to guy on TV: this is a different, yet acceptable use of the word charged) with reporting on Bonds, Rove, Whitewater or any other sensational news-item-of-the-days have stopped to remember these things.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending Bonds or taking a stand on the allegations here at all. If I was that worked up about Bonds and steroids, well, I sit about 30 feet away from Mark Fainara-Wada and Lance Williams (the Chronicle reporters who wrote “Game of Shadows”) every day, and if I really didn’t like what they’d written about Barry, well, I could probably bean them with a rubber chicken at any moment of my choosing.

But I haven’t. Quite the contrary. I respect the work my Chronicle coworkers have done. They’ve been ahead of the pack from day one and, most importantly, they’ve been fair about it.

When that happens, media outlets that aren’t first with the story tend to get a little carried away, sometimes speculating out of control, even to the point of talking about “charges” that have never been filed.

So to the folks responsible for this, and for everyone who continues to over-report news that hasn’t happened yet, but may yet happen someday, I suggest they try going back to the basics:

Report the news. Be fair. Get it right. And, just as I tried to do this morning, wake up and smell the coffee.